Syndicate

The confirmation comes from Upcoming Film Scores and the Disney folk they checked it out with: Daft Punk have signed on to write the score to Joseph Kosinski’s new Tron movie – Tron, Tron 2.0, Tr2n, 2ron or whatever the heck it ends up being called. May I suggest Trons? Jeez. It’s gonna get a bad name no matter what.

Officially, this is Daft Punk’s first full score. This strikes my skeptical side as a little odd seeing as they starred in, directed, edited, wrote and shot Electroma. The score for that film is credited to one Stephen Baker though I’m more than a little doubtful about his existence. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Baker turns out to be a Roderick Jaynes style fabrication. Should you be reading this, Mr. Baker, please do get in touch. I’d hate to be denying credit where it’s actually due.

I’ve used a still from Electroma at the head of the post. The crash-helmeted characters you see are a pair of robots played by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, the members of Daft Punk. One prolonged sequence of the film sees them with human faces made of latex fitted over these shiny cyberheads. As if that isn’t disturbing enough – and it actually is, I had to watch through my fingers – there’s a truly disturbing bit where the latex melts. Shudder. Nightmares are made by Electroma – and I guess that’s a strong recommendation.

Any band with the music video back catalogue of Daft Punk must have done something right, even if that’s just signing to a label with a whip smart video commissioner. Amongst their compendium of mini-gems are Spike Jonze’ Da Funk, Michel Gondry’s Around the World, Leiji Matsumoto’s anime suite for Interstellar 555, Roman Copolla’s Revolution 909 and The YouTube Community’s collective efforts at writing on themselves and learning complex choreography.

The only way I’d feel Daft Punk were a neater, more seemingly fated appointment for the Tron gig would be if Kraftwerk had scored the original instalment. As it were, the amazing sounds the first time around were provided by Wendy Carlos who simply doesn’t have a modern day analog (pun intended).